


What Is It You Wanna Feel?

by Deannie



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-08-20
Updated: 1997-08-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 00:01:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder contemplates his feelings after "Grotesque."</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Is It You Wanna Feel?

Mulder looked at his newly-bare walls in sadness. All the figures, the demons, the gargoyles, had been put in the trash. He had resisted the urge to burn them while he was at it.

He felt horrible. It wasn't just the same old let down he'd always felt after any ISU profile he'd done had ended in a conviction. It wasn't the same old winding down that the fear of getting into their heads always left behind. It was something different this time. Something more... sinister.

He sighed, rising to walk to the tiny kitchenette, grabbing a beer from the refrigerator, and standing morosely in the doorway as he opened it, taking a large sip, as if to calm himself.

There was a definite reason why he'd left the Investigative Support Unit. This was it. He didn't _like_ getting into their heads, regardless of how good at it he might be. It scared him, the thoughts, the images...

His own words came back to him, twice as fervent and equally as condemning. "Seeing everything that he saw, feeling what he felt..."

"But all that horror didn't just go away..."

No, it didn't. With a sick feeling still in his stomach, he walked to the stereo, turning it on. He couldn't watch television right now. There were too many visions already in his mind.

The song that came on a few minutes later took him by surprise, the words jerking him up from his slouch on the cushions, jerking him out of his thoughts:

> _You don't know what's wrong,_  
>  You only know it isn't right.  
>  You don't remember for how long,  
>  But you wake in tears at night.  
>  Big deal...

Well, he _did_ remember for how long... Ever since his sister disappeared. Big deal, right?

But somehow it _was._

> _You spend four nights a week now_  
>  Looking for your inner child.  
>  What you gonna say when you find him?  
>  Suppose you don't like him or  
>  He doesn't like you?  
>  Suppose once you wake him up  
>  He won't go back to bed  
>  And wants to stay up late watching TV?

That line nearly made him smile. Stay up late watching tv... He'd never had a choice about that one. The dreams were so vivid, so _hellish,_ that he'd spent most of his life _afraid_ to sleep.

"Big Deal..."

> _But you say there must be some_  
>  Reason you feel this way.  
>  Big deal, that's the way we all feel.  
>  Big deal, what is it you wanna feel?

What was it he wanted to feel? Safe, loved, protected... He wanted to feel _happy..._

> _You say you wanna get cured,_  
>  You wanna turn off your head.  
>  Oh, you say it hurts,  
>  And you feel unsure. 

His thoughts drifted as the song continued. He did want to turn off his head, wanted to stop the images of death and pain and betrayal that spent each night floating through his senses. He wanted not to look at his partner and instantly see every life-or-death situation he'd dragged her into. He wanted to see her free, not shackled to a madman with killers' thoughts floating in his head. A madman whose screwups would one day get her killed...

Scully shouldn't have to put up with him. She was a bright, beautiful, competent young agent, someone who should be on the Bureau's fast track. He didn't even think she _wanted_ to stay with him, not after the last six months. She'd expressed her feelings to him all too clearly: "Maybe not a shovel... Maybe a backhoe."

He wondered, thinking back over the last few days, if perhaps this would be the case that did it. Maybe this was the case where she finally said "enough, no more chasing after ghosts, no more danger, no more loss..."

And that would be the biggest loss _he_ could possibly suffer, he realized. Losing her. And she had every right to do it to him...

> _First you doubt yourself_  
>  And then you doubt her.  
>  Big deal, that's the way we all feel.  
>  What is it you wanna feel?  
>  I don't think you wanna feel.

The song's final stanza jolted him out of his self-pity. Scully would never leave him. He should know that by now....

"What is it you wanna feel?"

He wanted to feel what he knew he had... He wanted to feel the safety and the partnership that Dana Scully gave him--the partnership he'd been avoiding through this entire case...

"I don't think you wanna feel..."

With a melancholy sigh, he picked up the phone, dialling her number as the last strains of that song died away.

"Scully? It's me..."

* * *

_The End_


End file.
